Spring 2011 Newsletter

Riding Clinic with Anna
Sat 25th - Sund 26th June
9am - 6pm

Ash Tree Farm
Ash Cross
Dartmouth
TQ6 OLR

Adult spectators £20 per day including lunch

(6-16 yrs old pay £10 and under 6 yrs free)

Please bring a chair.

The weekend will involve 5 riders having individual and group lessons with Anna through a combination of ridden and ground work. Each rider has the opportunity to choose what they would like to work on with their horse, for example getting in time with a horse's feet while manoeuvring on the ground, ridden lateral work, transitions, or how to handle situations like separation anxiety in a horse while riding as a group. Anna's focus is always to help the rider understand why a horse is responding in the way that they are and then work with the horse's mind to develop a better understanding between horse and rider.

Jenny and Ian cook a delicious lunch and their facilities are ideal for these events with an outdoor arena, toilets, and a polytunnel for lunch and mid afternoon discussions on Horsemanship. This event was a great success last year. Do come along and join us as a spectator for only £20 a day including a delicious lunch.

Rider places for this Clinic are full but I hope to run another Clinic at this fascility in late August. If you would like to ride in the August Clinic then please do email me asap. The cost for riders will be £50 per day including lunch.

Click on all photos to see them enlarged.

America 2011

Harry and his horse Easy.

I worked with a 3yr old mare called Shylow. She arrived from Texas on the same day that I flew in from England. The only information that Harry knew about her was that she had worn a saddle and had maybe had a couple of rides in her life. It became very evident though during my time working with her that she was used to feeling that when a human asked something of her it was more of a hindrance than a help in her life.
 
In the first photo below I'm working to help her to find comfort in being with me while she is loose in the round pen. Here she was able to investigate her options regarding leaving me or staying with me.

In the second photo Shylow was struggling to stay mentally with me while being out on the lunge. Her body was crooked on the circle because she was still looking out of the pen rather than relaxed, focused on me and the circle. My positioning and the way that I presented what I wanted to Shylow was put to the test because she is such a sensitive mare. In the third photo working closer to her helped her and I to stay connected. I had to be as specific as possible about directing her feet through my body language and the rope. Harry spoke about how riding a mare like her would need a rider who was with her every step and not day dreaming for one second about other things.

I discovered that Shylow disliked being touched around the girth area - an area where she needed to feel more confident due to our leg hanging there. In the forth photo she had started to feel better and more relax about being touched in and around this area. Her need to show her teeth and swish her tail was previously only due to a troubled feeling in her.

After two weeks of steadily working to help her to feel better, Harry found out that she had previously panicked with a rider on, causing her to jump off a high bank into a river. This confirmed our thoughts that there was a reason for how troubled she felt, and she was telling us this in the only way that she could.

In the photos below I was riding an older horse. I was working at getting in time with her feet so that I could direct her feet with more ease. The left hand photo shows her preparing to place her right front out to the right. We can see that she is mentally with me in this photo, unlike in the second photo when her attention had left the arena and my right rein and right leg were about to draw her mind back. Then in the third photo we see that she is back in the arena and starting to carry herself forward in a relaxed way. It's good to be able to manoeuvre a horse's individual feet but also to keep in mind that it's the horse's mind being with us and attentive which is most important - only then can the horse as a whole start to feel weightless underneath us. A little bit like driving a new sports car, we hardly need to touch the peddle for a response and when we put our foot on the break it immediately slows. Ideally there isn't resistance as if the hand break was still on! In Ray Hunt's words 'Your idea should become the horse's idea, and when it does, then they'll be no drag'.

I worked with Gus a mule who has been at Harry's for a few years now. He hadn't been ridden for a couple of years and his feet were in need of trimming. Harry asked me if I would spend five minutes a day catching Gus and picking up his feet to prepare him for the farrier in a week's time. I knew that Gus struggled to trust humans because last year catching him in the field he'd sniffed me and then left at high speed when I lifted up the halter to put it around his neck. This time I decided to try and find Gus's itchy areas and blend together scratching him and approaching his feet. I made sure that I didn't feel as though I was in a hurry, as if I had all of the time in the world. It was also helpful to breathe out while picking his foot up so that I knew I wasn't braced in my body which could cause him to brace against me.

A week later the farrier came and I thought nothing of it, assuming that Gus was generally better this year with being handled because he'd been pretty relaxed every day when I had handled his feet. While I was holding Gus and the farrier walked into his stall it became clear that Gus didn't trust him. I realised how quickly a mule can move when they want to! So in order to trim Gus's feet I held each foot up while the farrier trimmed, as seen in the second photo below. Apparently this is how most horses are shod in Germany. The farrier couldn't step any closer to Gus though because Gus's self preservation meant that he would try to leave or kick. I ended up being tutored through how to trim his feet, as seen in the last photo. When the farrier stayed at a distance Gus felt better.

It's experiences like this that leave me thinking about the responsibility that we have to be consistent on a daily basis, so that trust can grow and an animal can then begin to believe that we're here for their best interest.